Background and Relevant Art
Computer systems and related technology affect many aspects of society. Indeed, the computer system's ability to process information has transformed the way we live and work. Computer systems now commonly perform a host of tasks (e.g., word processing, scheduling, accounting, etc.) that prior to the advent of the computer system were performed manually. More recently, computer systems have been coupled to one another and to other electronic devices to form both wired and wireless computer networks over which the computer systems and other electronic devices can transfer electronic data. Accordingly, the performance of many computing tasks is distributed across a number of different computer systems and/or a number of different computing environments.
Search engines can be used on networks, including the Internet, to locate information of interest to a user. A search engine typically uses a crawler that continual crawls Web pages on a network, such as, the Internet, to index content. To find content, a user submits one or more search terms to the search engine. The search engine identifies pages deemed to contain content relevant to the one or more search terms. The search engine then returns links to the identified pages back to the user. The user can then select (e.g., “click”) a link to view content of a corresponding page.
A structured data search system (SDSS) similarly crawls a network, such as the Internet, to index structured information. Structured information can include tables in a relational database or HTML tables extracted from Web pages. To find structured data, a user submits one or more search terms to the SDSS. The SDSS identifies structured data, such as, a table, deemed to contain content relevant to the one or more search terms. The search engine then returns the structured data back to the user. The user can then integrate the structured data into their applications.
Due to the diversity of content generation on the Internet, the definition and content of structured data as well as the integration of structured data into a Web page can vary widely between different Web pages. As such, it can be difficult to effectively index structured data, such as, tables. When structured data is not appropriately indexed, search results are less relevant.
Further, even when multiple portions of structured data (e.g., multiple tables) match search terms, there may be no way to determine an order in which to present the different portions. Determining an order becomes increasingly difficult as the number of identified portions increases. For example, hundreds or even thousands of tables can be returned as a match for entered search terms. Although some tables may be more relevant than other tables, it may be difficult to identify more relevant tables and present the more relevant tables prior to less relevant tables.